


the right amount of reverence

by lovebeyondmeasure



Series: lbm's trope mashups [2]
Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bookstore, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Drunken Confessions, F/M, Not exactly a fic but like.... most of the way to being a fic, Trope Mashup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-26
Packaged: 2019-05-29 05:21:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15066041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovebeyondmeasure/pseuds/lovebeyondmeasure
Summary: “It’s brilliant,” Cormoran says, eyes tracing the dusty high-up shelves, full of unexpurgated editions of Shakespeare crammed cheek-to-jowl with children’s books for the 1950s. “It’s brilliant, and it’s mine.”But he does need some staff. Like, at least one other person. He physically can’t be the only one to work there, even with his margins what they are. So he scrawls a sign and puts it in the window and hopes for something better than a spotty school-aged git.The next day, the bell over the door jingles to announce a lovely young woman with shining gold hair and a glittering ring on her finger who looks at the shop with exactly the right amount of reverence. “I’m Robin Ellacott,” she says, shaking his hand firmly. “I live across the street, just there, and I’m in love with your shop. I came over as soon as I saw the sign.”A trope mashup that's like....halfway to being a fic.





	1. Bookstore AU + Neighbors AU

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bethanyactually](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bethanyactually/gifts).



> Bethany prompted a [Bookstore AU + Neighbors AU](http://lovebeyondmeasure.tumblr.com/post/175271706804/cormoranrobin-bookshop-au-neighbors-au-with) over on tumblr, which is the first half of this work, then sent a separate prompt for a [Flatmates AU + In Vino Veritas mashup](http://lovebeyondmeasure.tumblr.com/post/175288840214/cormoranrobin-roommate-au-in-vino-veritas-au), which is the second half! Both posts are linked if anyone wants to share them on tumblr.
> 
> I'm crossposting these [Trope Mashups](http://lovebeyondmeasure.tumblr.com/post/174158556839/fanfiction-trope-mash-up) onto ao3, and anyone is welcome to send me more, but please know that this is all there will be of these works. They are complete as-is. If you want more content, send me a new prompt at my tumblr! Anon is always on, so you don't need a tumblr account (or an ao3 account!) to send me something. 
> 
> This is roughly half an outline and half a fic, with a pinch of meta for seasoning. I hope you enjoy it!

After Cormoran gets out of the military, down one leg but up one gorgeous, damaged woman, he’s thinking about what to do with his life. He’s really only good at one thing, he thinks, and he’s tired of following orders. So he ought to start his own PI service. But it’s hard, hard on his body and hard on his life, and he can’t afford an office yet so he spends a lot of time in coffeeshops and bookstores. One secondhand bookshop, in particular, becomes a haunt for him. It’s small but has a great location, and specializes in old editions, foreign languages, that sort of thing. It smells right. 

He gets to know the owners, an older couple who started the shop 50 years ago, before the neighborhood started to gentrify. They actually own the building outright, that’s how bad the neighborhood was at the time. But they’re achy and tired and thinking about retirement. And Cormoran feels a light bulb flick on in his brain.

The loan from his goddamn father is to buy the couple out of the bookstore. Well, he purchases half the store, and they agree to will him the rest, since they never had kids. So his life takes an abrupt but welcome turn, and Cormoran is now a small business owner. The apartments above the shop are his, as well, since the couple is retiring to cruise and travel the world as they’d always dreamed. 

I invite you to now consider what Charlotte thinks of all this. “It’s…. charming, Bluey,” she says, “but it’s not very….”

“It’s brilliant,” Cormoran says, eyes tracing the dusty high-up shelves, full of unexpurgated editions of Shakespeare crammed cheek-to-jowl with children’s books from the 1950s. “It’s brilliant, and it’s mine.”

But he does need some staff. Like, at least one other person. He physically can’t be the only one to work there, even with his margins what they are. So he scrawls a sign and puts it in the window and hopes for something better than a spotty school-aged git.

The next day, the bell over the door jingles to announce a lovely young woman with shining gold hair and a glittering ring on her finger who looks at the shop with exactly the right amount of reverence. “I’m Robin Ellacott,” she says, shaking his hand firmly. “I live across the street, just there, and I’m in love with your shop. I came over as soon as I saw the sign.”

Cormoran hadn’t thought as far ahead as an interview, and Robin is so completely not what he pictured that he’s rather thrown. “Have you ever worked in retail before?” he manages.

“No, but I’m a quick learner and I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty. And I’m stronger than I look, too.”

“And what do you know about books?”

“Well, I read for Literature in uni, and I read pretty much constantly, all sorts of genres. Matthew always jokes I ought to just move into the library, since I live there anyway.”

“Oh, you have a degree?” _What is an obviously competent woman with a degree doing looking for a job in a shop?_

“No,” she says, tucking her hair behind her ear. “I, ah. I had to drop out. For personal reasons.”

“Oh,” he says. “I never finished uni either.”

And then, somehow, she’s hired. And Robin is a wonder. She cleans like a demon, not scrubbing away the worn charm but still eradicating the dust bunnies colonizing the tops of the stacks. She begins to organize the shop into sections, not losing the treasure-hunt feel but corralling the kid’s books into one area instead of all of them. And she sets them up with an online presence that starts bringing in business, customers willing to drop good money on rare editions that’ve been hiding in the back of shelves for decades.

Charlotte smiles at her, but it’s more like baring her teeth. And Matthew doesn’t look best pleased when Robin leaves their flat after dinner to run back across the street. And one night, sitting at his desk poring over numbers, Cormoran looks out his window to see Robin through her window, sitting on her bed and brushing out her hair, and he thinks, _oh. Oh, fuck._ But she closes her curtains and he closes his eyes. He has Charlotte, dammit. For all that’s worth. She’s become so distant, and she doesn’t love this life he’s chosen for himself. He still hasn’t bought her a ring. But he swears to himself he’s going to work things out with her. 

And then that crashes and burns, almost the next day. He goes back to her flat to find fucking Jago Ross sitting shirtless at the table, and things devolve almost as fast as Jago gets out of there. Screaming, throwing things, the usual Charlotte rampage. But then, out of nowhere, Cormoran thinks, _why is this usual?_ just as she hits him in the face, and then he’s done.

Robin is solicitous of his woes, and Cormoran wills himself not to find solace in the way she starts bringing him meals. They’re neighbors, after all, as well as coworkers. It’s only natural they’d be friends. But then, a week later, she comes into work with bags under her eyes and no ring on her hand, and it’s somehow his fault, he knows it. He tells himself it’s arrogant to think that way, but he absolutely knows it.

And it is his fault, in a way.

“Poor Cormoran,” she’d sighed over dinner. “They’d been together 16 years, and she cheats on him. It’s so terrible.”

And there’d been something in Matthew’s face. Something…

And now Robin doesn’t want to go back to her flat, and Cormoran offers to let her stay. After all, he has an extra bedroom. And they’re neighbors, and coworkers, and friends. And if he has a quiet longing for Robin to look at him the way she looks at his bookshop, well. No one needs to know that but him.


	2. Flatmates AU + In Vino Veritas

Robin’s staying in his spare room, and it’s fine. It’s totally fine that his shower smells like her shampoo, and that she likes to sing along to the radio while she cooks, and that she doesn’t mind him yelling at the footy while she reads on the other end of the couch. (And if he can hear her crying sometimes, late at night, that’s fine, too. It’s not his business. It’s _not_.)

He knows that eventually, Robin will let go of the simmering anger she’s carrying in her chest, and he’s right. And for all of a week, it seems like she’s taken Matthew back. Cormoran braced himself for the inevitable; after all, she stayed in his guest room, as a guest, for only a short time. That’s what a guest is. Someone who leaves after a while. But then Matthew gets a job offer on the continent, and accepts it…without even consulting Robin. She’s working her usual shift out front, while Cormoran squints at his expenses and worries, when she comes to the back to take a phone call, and he watches her crumple into herself silently.

“What do you mean, you took it?” she asks, and her voice is wooden, heavy. The voice on the other end of the line is jubilant. “I know it’s a great opportunity, Matthew, but I’m not moving to Amsterdam. Congratulations, though.”

When she hangs up, he’s at a loss. She wipes her face, plasters on a smile, and goes back out to run the shop. And that night, he goes to find her in the pub, and brings her back to his flat, because she’s not going back to the one across the street.

“He thought I would just…. follow him,” she says, laying on the couch at 3 am, full of white wine and that familiar bubbling bitterness. “That I would just drop my life and trail along like a good little wife. Thank god we pushed back the date. I don’t know what I would have done if we were already married.”

“So what are you going to do?” he asks, kicked back in his recliner, his prosthesis on the floor. 

“I’m going to sleep this off,” she says, flinging a bare left hand over her eyes, “then I’m gonna deal with this in the morning.”

“Are you…” Cormoran doesn’t know how to phrase it. He knows what it is to have your life so entangled with another person’s that it seems impossible to extricate yourself. 

“I’m not going back to him,” she says, her voice like stone. “Not ever. He thought my job with you was some place-holder that I’d be happy to drop the moment something better for him came along. He never understood how much I love our shop.”

_Our shop._ That sounds good to Cormoran. It sounds…. right.

In the morning, he makes Robin eggs and toast and tea, and offers her a proposal.

“I know you don’t have a plan,” he says, as she nibbles on her toast. “I don’t want to presume anything, but. Well, it wasn’t bad, having you here for a week. And you’re a much better cook than me.”

She smiles at this, and it gives him courage. 

“I don’t have to pay rent on this flat, since it’s part of the shop building. I just have to keep paying back my loan and paying the original owners their share of profits. So if you wanted to- that is- fuck it, do you want to move in here? You can keep the spare room, and you wouldn’t have to pay rent. If you want to. I don’t know if that’s weird, or-”

But now Robin is crying, and he takes that for assent, and now he has a flatmate. And he certainly doesn’t have feelings for her. Not even a little bit. Sure, she’s objectively attractive. And smart. And caring. And a great cook. But she’s not just his employee or his flatmate, she’s his friend, and he’s not going to fuck that up, not for anything. Not even for his foolish heart.

And it’s… good. Robin fetches her things from across the street, and suddenly his flat acquires things like matching bath towels and throw pillows. She begins re-decorating, packing up things that belong to the older couple to put up in storage, and the flat starts looking like it belongs in the 21st century. He hadn’t thought he cared about such things, but it’s nice. Homey. 

And they live together, and work together, and somehow it’s easy. It’s natural to switch out in the washroom in the mornings, and to run upstairs to fetch leftovers for lunch, and to talk about the shop over dinner. It’s not like it was with Charlotte; she doesn’t demand his time or attention constantly, and she likes his friends, when he finally brings her along to meet them. His friends, in turn, like her. 

She and Ilsa get on like a house on fire, and he regrets introducing them immediately. Nick nudges him with one elbow, watching the women laugh at their booth in the pub. “She’s sweet,” Nick says. “It’s good to see you happy.”

“She is,” Cormoran agrees, “but it’s not- we’re not-”

Nick nods, sipping his beer. “Of course not.”

And watching Robin’s face light up when they bring back the next round, the way she smiles at him, makes Cormoran feel off-balance in a way that has nothing to do with how many Doom Bars he’s got sloshing around inside him. 

She supports him as they stumble to the Tube station to take them back to their flat, and she’s tall and sturdy enough to do it, and her waist fits so nicely under his hand; once they’re seated, he lets his head lean down to rest on her shoulder, just because he can, and he wants to. She just smiles at him and twists her arm free, laying it across his shoulders and scratching gently at his scalp. He shudders, pressing closer, enjoying this perfect moment of closeness, wishing in his softly drunken haze that he didn’t have to move ever again. He doesn’t realize he’s said as much aloud until Robin stiffens up, tugging at him to tell him it’s their stop.

She gets him up to their flat, silent all the way, and Cormoran is so focused on putting his prosthesis firmly on the ground that he doesn’t notice. The next morning, groggy and hungover, he doesn’t even remember his murmured admission. Robin remembers, though. And she can’t stop thinking about it. She’s just about convinced herself that he was enjoying the head scratching, not her closeness, when she begins to see their interactions in the new light of this one moment. The way he treats her with respect for her intelligence and contributions. The way he smiles at her while she’s cooking them dinner. The way he calls the bookshop “ours.”

_Maybe,_ she thinks. _Maybe… he feels something too._ But she’s just out of a long relationship, and so is he, and it’s the worst timing, and more than that, they’re flatmates, and he’s her boss, and it’s all so… complicated. 

But still, Robin wonders. And then it’s nearly All Hallows’ Eve, and she’s up on a ladder hanging decorations. She’s convinced Cormoran to sign up the shop for the trick-or-treating event that goes from shop to shop, and he sighed and gave her what she wanted. She’s nearly got the cobwebs hung from the doorway between the children’s room and the classics when the ladder slides beneath her, and she’s just begun to scream when Cormoran catches her from behind. 

Clutched up against his heaving chest, Robin’s head is spinning, but she can feel the way he presses his face into her hair and breathes deeply, the sigh of relief he lets out. She’s got her hands wrapped tight around his arm, and her life has just flashed before her eyes, and she doesn’t even think. She twists around in his arms, wrapping her arms around his neck to return the embrace, nearly sobbing. They haven’t been this close since the night she brought him home sloppy drunk, and she’s been wondering for so long, and she’s drunk on the rush of adrenaline pounding in her veins. 

“You scared the shit out of me,” he says, and she can feel the way his voice rumbles in his chest. 

“You’re the best thing that ever happened to me,” she says in response. 

His grip loosens, and he's shaking his head, eyes wide as saucers. “You’re just being nice because I saved your life,” he tries to joke, but she shakes her head.

“You are,” she insists, but the adrenaline is draining as fast as it came, and he’s not- he doesn’t-

He reaches out to tuck her hair back behind her ear, and she turns into his hand, seeking this one last touch, this one sign of affection. His hand stays on her face, and she looks up at him, hoping-

The bell on the door jingles, a customer entering, and they spring apart as though they’ve done something wrong. Robin thinks that that’s the end of it, and hopes fervently that things between them aren’t ruined forever. 

He doesn’t come up for dinner that night. Robin stares at her chicken and potatoes, wondering if she ought to leave him alone. But he’s just downstairs in the office, staring at columns of numbers on a screen and not seeing them, and when he touches his shoulder he jumps. 

“I brought your dinner down,” she offers, setting the plate on his desk. He nods, jerkily, silent, and Robin doesn’t know what to say. “I… I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable, earlier,” she tries. “I didn’t mean to.”

“If you did what?” he asks, and his voice is raspy, his throat dry.

“If I said something wrong, or did something…” she trails off, twisting the hem of her top between her fingers. 

“You think-” he says, turning his chair to face her fully. “You think I’m mad at you?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “It’s all so- I mean, I don’t want to mess up things- you’ve been so good to me, and I don’t know what for, and I’m just- I’m so lucky, and I don’t want to make you feel like-”

“Jesus, Robin,” he says, hauling himself to his feet on the edge of the desk. “Shut up, would you,” and his hand’s slipping behind her ear, and he’s- jesus, he’s kissing her, and it’s everything- it’s- she melts into the kiss, letting it blaze up and consume her. 

He leans his forehead against hers, and it’s like the world is standing absolutely still. 

Robin starts laughing. 

“What?” Cormoran asks, expecting a shove, a slap, maybe a kind letdown.

“I was so afraid that you- and you-” she laughs. 

“You’re impossible,” he growls, and she laughs up at him, so fully alive with surprised happiness that he’s hopeless not to love her in that moment, and he kisses her again. And again. And again.

And things are complicated. They’re not perfect. But there are moments like these, and that’s more than enough to make it worth it.


End file.
